UP-FRONT ROMNEY CAMPAIGN NUGGET!!
Is Romney Going To Run Out Of Money? (Zeke Miller) from BuzzFeed
"Santorum goes to the small-donor well, but Romney may have to dip into his own pockets to survive the long haul. Looking “under every stone.”"
Interesting. I had assumed right along that Romney's coffers were just brimming with cash -- particularly when you look at how much he spent in Florida and he seems to be preparing to spend in Michigan. This article suggests that the coffers are NOT getting replenished at nearly the rate they need to be. EVERY paragraph in this item (if true) bespeaks a campaign that will be in deep trouble if the primary season goes long. The Washington Post covers the same topic here.
Aggressive Acts by Iran Signal Pressure on Its Leadership from the New York Times
"A flurry of actions and statements by Iran this week suggest its leaders are responding frantically, and more unpredictably, to the tightening of sanctions by the West."
Beating History: Why Today's Rising Powers Can't Copy the West (Heather Horn) from the Atlantic
"If BRICs want to grow as rich as today's powers, they'll have to find a new model, because the Industrial Revolution could only happen once."
Citizens United Part II: Montana Supreme Court Collides With U.S. Supreme Court (Mike Sacks) from the Huffington Post
"The fate of Montana's century-old ban on corporate political spending is now in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, setting up a possible sequel to the hotly contested Citizens United decision handed down two years ago. In 2010, a five-member majority of the U.S. Supreme Court declared that corporations' independent spending in elections does not corrupt -- or even appear to corrupt -- the political process. On Wednesday, Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock submitted a brief to the Court with facts that suggest otherwise as he urged the justices to uphold his state's ban on corporate political spending."
Now, wouldn't it be something if just two years of experience with Citizens United could persuade one or more justices to flip on this decision and strike Citizens United down! Something devoutly to be wished!
Leak Offers Glimpse of Campaign Against Climate Science from the New York Times
"Disclosed files from the nonprofit Heartland Institute outline a plan to undermine the teaching of global warming in public schools, and they identify some corporate donors."
Obama Winning His War on Coal from the Editorial Board of the Intelligencer, Wheeling News-Register [of West Virginia]
This is a very right-wing paper, a total mouthpiece for the coal industry -- so I take their bitching here as a sign that Obama is making some real progress here on the elimination of coal-fired power plants.
"Time may already have run out for Americans to defeat President Barack Obama in his war against the coal industry. Many utility companies already have run up the white flag. ... A few weeks ago it was revealed at least 32 coal-fired power plants in 12 states, including West Virginia and Ohio, would be closed so utility companies could comply with the Obama administration's air pollution regulations."
President Obama Birth Control Compromise Divides Catholic Leaders (Laura Bassett) from the Huffington Post
"... prominent progressive Catholics broke with Catholic bishops and Republican lawmakers on the issue Wednesday, saying Obama had won them over when he revised the rules to allow faith-based institutions to opt out of providing the coverage."
Obama Is Reassembling the Coalition That Swept Him to Victory (Ronald Brownstein) from the Atlantic
"If the president maintains his support in key demographics, Mitt Romney would be in serious trouble in a head-to-head matchup."
2008 Obama Coalition Returning (Ed Kilgore) from the Washington Monthly
"...the latest general election (he especially utilizes Pew’s) polls show Obama hitting his marks among element after element of his 2008 coalition to a degree that is truly remarkable, at least in a trial heat against Mitt Romney."
Why Obama Will Embrace the 99 Percent (Nate Silver) from the New York Times
"The last time I considered Barack Obama’s re-election chances in this magazine, in mid-November, things were looking pretty bleak for the president. The statistical model I used measured three key factors — a president’s approval rating, economic growth and the ideological orientation of his opponent — and taken together, they showed that Obama had become a slight underdog to win re-election. Three months later, his position is much stronger."
Fox News 'Course Correction' Rankles Some from Politico
"The grumblers were picking up on a strategy that has been under way for some time — a “course correction,” as Fox chief Roger Ailes put it last fall — with the network distancing itself from the tea party cheerleading that characterized the first two years of President Barack Obama’s presidency. Lately, Fox has increasingly promoted its straight-news talent in the press and conducted some of the toughest interviews and debates of the Republican primary season. Just last week, it hired the openly gay liberal activist Sally Kohn as a contributor. All along, Fox watchers warned that it risked alienating conservative true believers as it inched toward the center. Well, consider them alienated."
IF FOX is moving to the center (and I am not convinced that it is), it may have something to do with a story I heard last year about a growing conundrum Roger Ailes began to perceive as the Tea Party really began throwing its weight around: namely that the conservative counter-narrative that FOX News was helping to sustain was becoming so at-variance with REALITY that FOX anchors were increasingly looking ridiculous and GOP candidates running for office were finding it harder and harder to sustain counter-narrative fictions and not sound like complete looney tunes when it came time to compete in general elections. Ailes still has the same goal: to help the GOP triumph over the Dems, but now sees perhaps that he can't continue to feed the most radical right-wing elements without actually damaging the very party he's trying to support. Too late, dude. Damage done.
Sweet Home Michigan? (Chuck Todd et al.,) from MSNBC
"Either Michigan is the place where he rights his campaign's ship and continues his methodical march to the nomination. Or it’s the place -- because of all the advantages he enjoys in the state -- where we all realize he might not recover to become the GOP nominee. (And trust us, if Romney loses Michigan, the GOP noise about finding a new candidate will become deafening.) That's what's at stake in Michigan two weeks from now. There’s no overstating the importance of this race."
And there he is in Michigan blasting the auto bailout in an effort to win over the Tea Partiers! I would be a surprise if this strategy actually works.
Michigan: A Firewall for Romney—or the Bonfire of His Hopes? (Molly Ball) from the Atlantic
"Mitt Romney's supporters believe there's no way he'll lose his home state. But Rick Santorum sees an opportunity to topple a fragile front-runner."
The GOP’s Emerging Bob Dole Problem (Steve Kornacki) from Salon
"The last Republican to take on a Democratic president never recovered from his primary season wounds."
Mitt Romney, the Inevitable and Unelectable Man (Dan Kennedy) from the Huffington Post
"From the start, Romney's candidacy has been defined by two dynamics. On the one hand, there's little doubt that he is absolutely unacceptable to right-wing Republicans, which is to say the people who actually comprise a majority of activists in the nominating process. On the other hand, I can't remember the last time a serious candidate for national office such as Romney was lucky enough to run against such a weak field of competitors."
Mitt Romney's Car Wreck in Michigan (Howard Kurtz) from the Daily Beast
"Mitt Romney, son of Michigan, is trying to speed away from a car wreck of an issue. So far, it’s not working. With the Michigan primary coming up on Feb. 28, Romney was thought to be the favorite in a state where his father was not just governor but a top auto executive. But there’s this teensy problem of a New York Times op-ed piece that Mitt wrote in 2008 after Barack Obama was elected, headlined: “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”"
HOW MANY TIMES have we seen this election cycle where GOP candidates have embraced at some point the everything-Obama-has-done-is-wrong-and-evil meme -- only to have to later retreat or simply pretend they never said such things. Here's Romney in Michigan realizing pretty late in the game how deeply he's thrust his own foot into his own mouth. This, like so many other cases one sees with the GOP 'smart set', is so much a product of saying whatever you need to say to win today's "news cycle" and to show how wrong you think Obama has been on everything -- with no thought as to how it might look when, lo and behold, you actually need to campaign later in a place like, say, Michigan. Myopic desperation on their part it seems to me.
Rick Santorum Knows What Women Want. Who Else Would Know Better? (Alexandra Petri) from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Silly women. Professional accomplishments are for men. Any notions to the contrary stem from, as Mr. Santorum called it in his 2005 book, "It Takes a Family," "radical feminism's misogynistic crusade to make working outside the home the only marker of social value and self-respect." I'm glad he's here to tell us these things. No, social value and self- respect derived outside the home can't be what women really want. And if there's a man out there who knows what women really want, it's Rick Santorum."
Rick Santorum Wants Your Sex Life to Be 'Special' (Conor Friedersdorf) from the Atlantic
"What separates issues that are in the proper purview of politics from matters best left to individuals? I'd hate to draw that line for everyone, but watching Rick Santorum in the much-discussed interview above, I'm confident in declaring that he's put himself on the wrong side of it."
Santorum: Birth Control ‘Harmful to Women’ (Jennifer Rubin) from the Washington Post
"This is how, in part, he lost Pennsylvania — by appearing extreme and schoolmarmish, too far to the right of average voters in a purple state. If he is the nominee in 2012, he might get some blue-collar fellows, but what about those women in Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc.?"
I've come to view Jennifer Rubin as the quintessential mouthpiece for the GOP establishment, the beltway crowd that are determined to saddle the Republicans with Romney as their nominee come hell or high water.
Santorum Off to an Early Start in the West from the Washington Post
"While Romney has rolled out a string of endorsements from elected officials in Oklahoma, Washington state and Idaho, Santorum has spent the past few days meeting with pastors, condemning the expansion of same-sex marriage laws and of government, and touting his conservative values."
CHINESE DIPLOMACY NUGGET!!
For the Vice President of China, Tea Time in Iowa from the New York Times
"Vice President Xi Jinping of China returned to Muscatine, Iowa, where 27 years ago he mingled with locals on an agricultural research trip."
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